Roll with the Punches (28 page)

"All the runway models will clamor for that one," Marian said.

"Didn't know you could meow, Rhonda," said George.

I dabbed my eyes, puffed my inhaler, and held a Kleenex to my nose faucet. "Where's James?"

They all pointed toward the door.

"He took Yvette away for safekeeping," George said, "Took your laptop, as well, to fix it." He rolled his eyes.

I wheezed again.

*
      
*
      
*

Back my condo, I sat at the kitchen table and called Harley.

"You did what with who in the where what?" she said.

"With whom," I wheezed.

"How hot was he?"

"Well," I took a pull on my inhaler. "Not exactly—"

"During a group meeting? Dang, Rhonda. You're insane."

"Yvette agrees. You can be her BFF." I sighed. "And it was awful. Now my hair's chopped up and I smell like mothballs. Ick."

"Good, you'll keep. So, what's Jackie's deal? How'd she get the money? Is she like divorced from Wayne Newton?"

"I didn't see her IRS stuff but her bank statements weren't equal to her recent spending. I did find three letters, and rescued them on a bathroom break from some strappy silver Jimmy Choos."

"I'm on the edge of my seat.”

I unfolded one. "Let's see. Dated January of this year. Dear Ms. Shawn, Enclosed you'll find payment for the vitamins I ordered. Signed F. H. Aw, shit. Same note on all three, just different dates."

"F. H.?"

I said, "Yeah. Probably some guy named Finklemeier Hearthstone with dry skin. But I've never seen any vitamin catalogues around Jackie's house.”

"That's telling. Usually, salesmen flash their stuff around. And why were the notes in the back of a drawer?"

"Beats me. No return address. I don't know. Jackie’s salt of the earth, good people. But George was acting funny, like he suspects her of being Jackson.”

"Maybe they're not vitamins. Maybe she sells dope or steroids."

"Or maybe she sells installments of my book. Look, this isn't helping me one bit. I still don't know who Reynard Jackson is."

"What about your garbage man?"

"Must be him," I said. "So far, I'm all wrong. George seemed like the gambler type, but the gambler is Marian. He sells Alice Fay Cosmetics, which seems like Jackie's line. Instead, she may sell steroids. I thought Jackie was a sex machine, but Marian has the boy toy. So which one of them would sell me out?"

"No, the real question is who of them could pull off such a nationally known, award-winning persona as Reynard Jackson? How would that work? None of them ever leave town.”

"Except Yvette. You should have heard her. I told her I was Reynard Jackson just to see her reaction. She said I was playing a dangerous game.”

"Which proves what?"

"Well, it seemed like she believed me. So maybe she doesn't know him."

"Or she's a good actress. But isn't she new to the area? How could she—?"

"So? She may not be Jackson, but more than ever I get the feeling she's in on it, somehow, and I'm gonna find out who with.”

"You mean
whom
with?” Harley chuckled. “And James?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. They're all nuts. I thought they all loved me.”

"Well, they do. Some in more interesting places than others.”

I hung up and went back over the evening, cringing at the rushed, goofy near-sex and the agony of closetus interruptus. How could such a hot guy be so off base? He was hot, wasn’t he? Yeah, but Dal was a lot more fun, in several ways. And dibsed. And James
was
helping me find my nemesis, and trying to protect me and my computer so I could take my real place in the writing world. Except he’d taken Yvette away before I could grill her about Reynard. Probably to save us all from a big scene. Surely he’d tell her he preferred me to her. The rose tattoo had meant that, right? That he wanted me, not her, to grab him by that lock of hair and hold on tight? But did I really want to, after this confusing, smelly evening?

I'd barely put down the phone from Harley's call when it rang again and Dal's voice caressed me like a kid-leather glove. "Rhonda, he wants you. Could you come over?"

My toes curled.

I schlepped back to Anaheim, very confused. I mean, Mr. Delicious Peachy James with his hands all over me hadn't done half as much as those two sentences from Dal to turn my motor on. But Delicious Peachy James was now finally mine, after a lot of hard work and planning. Yeah. Mine in mothballs.

"I'm missing
Boston Legal
. Turn it on," I yelled as I entered the ancestral house. In the family room, Music Man was snoring on the sofa, his big feet dangling a good fifteen inches off the end, big holes in both socks.

I heard banging in the garage and went to the door. Dal was out there in a tank top and a welder's mask, torch blazing, working on two long pieces of scrap metal. A few other pieces had already been soldered in shapes that looked like—well, if you squinched your eyes and framed the picture with your hands—maybe Matisse's wild women cutouts. Big triangular pieces for breasts, rounded pieces for buns, long squiggly stuff for hair and legs. And tiny heads. Or else they were poodles. Either way, seeing the raw artistic passion in the man made me tingle. God, were those legs long and well-muscled in those cut-offs, and the tank top revealed a sweaty bronze chest.

He saw me, took off the mask, and came toward me, eyes locked on mine.

Gulp.

"Hi," he said in a soft tone reminiscent of the night before. He approached with his torch blazing and I backed away. He cracked a crooked smile, turned off the flame, and dropped it.

"Rhonda." The word was hot and velvety, as was the hand which cupped my cheek and brought me close for a quick kiss.
Zing!
Fireworks shot to my toes.

"What's so urgent with Dad?" Remembering Harley, I backed up. "He's flaked out."

"He said he was dizzy and he wanted to see you." He followed me. "Then he fell asleep a few minutes ago." His other hand snaked toward my waist and his steely eyes searched my face for something indefinable. "Is that a new perfume?"

"Yeah. Mothballs. What are you doing?" I ignored his hand on my waist and pointed at the metal.

"Making a mobile. I've always wanted to be the next Alexander Calder.”

Funny, I could have sworn from the look in his eyes that he wanted something else. My heart sort of hopped around like a bunny. Had James ever made my heart jump? I couldn't remember.

"Are they supposed to be women in crazy positions with big boobs and butts and tiny heads? Like Picasso or Matisse pieces?" I asked.

His eyes flew open, and light blue flashed in the steel. He looked really happy for once and hugged me. "Wow, Rhonda. You got it. You think the heads are too small?"

Good thing I hadn't mentioned poodles. "Uh, I hate to comment on another artist's work. It might invite comments about my vampire character—that his—um," I touched Dal's firm, glistening shoulder, "shoulders are too wide or his fangs are too long or something."

He pulled me close, a hand on my butt. "If you ever want to measure the parts of a vampire, I'm completely at your disposal, night or day."

Harley. My friend
.
Dibs. DAMN!

I pulled away and walked over to study the metal shapes. Red, blue, green, orange. Some were huge, some smaller. There were different shapes in a corner. "What about them?"

He put his arms around me from behind. "They're old hat. The idea for these women just came while I wasn't sleeping last night. After—" He nipped my earlobe and caressed my stomach.

"Are those women all me?" My eyes widened.

"Mmm," he breathed.

I needed to fan myself. "But isn't it all a little heavy for a mobile?"

"Not if you balance it just right." His hands wandered over my bodyscape. He'd have made a great blind man, with such detail-oriented fingers.

I went all gooey inside.

Harley. Shit
. "Well, Dad's fine. I gotta go." I turned in his arms, but he didn’t let me go. I lifted an eyebrow. "You didn't ask me over here for Music Man."

He kissed my neck and nuzzled my shoulder. "No. I wanted to see your new hairdo.”

My hand went to the new cowlick on my head. "Your nose is growing.”

"How can you tell?" He aimed his mouth at mine.

I let him. After all, Jackie'd told me to get more kissing data on both guys. His mouth explored mine and his hands were slow and appreciative on my backside, not rushed like James's. Symphonic music swelled in my head, and Olympic scoreboards danced. In the Love-Making Olympics, Dal rated a 9.97 out of ten and James, sadly, barely hit a meager 3.8.

"He really did want to see you," Dal said huskily in my ear when he broke the kiss, "and so did I."

"Yeah," I said breathlessly.

The phone rang and I ran inside to get it. Dal followed and grabbed me from behind again.

"Rhonda?" Harley said, "Why are you there? I just talked to you at home. Is your dad okay?"

"Yeah," I said, trying not to pant as Dal's hands wandered up inside my shirt. There was a decided bulge pushing into my butt.

"I want to talk to the Indian. Is he there?"

"Uh. Yeah. I'll try to find him." Hand over the receiver, I counted to ten, enjoying the moment. His hands persisted, brushing my nipples through my bra, giving me the female equivalent of an erection.

Reluctantly, I handed him the phone. "It's Wonder Woman. She’s got dibs, remember? She's gonna ask you out. She'll kill me if you say
no
, and I'll kill you if you say
yes
."

The wonderful hands left my body, and I missed them. He frowned at the phone, but then his face lit up as he spoke to Harley. He turned away to talk for a minute and agreed to something, then hung up.

I could have wrung his neck. "What?" I asked.

He grinned, teeth flashing. "You were right. She wants to go out with me tomorrow night, so I won't be able to watch your dad." He waved and headed back to the garage, whistling.

I left the house ready to hit something. James the Delicious Peach thought I was sexy. So did Dal. They'd both been all over me this evening, and yet I was going home alone.

Wednesday was Halloween. The agency sent two twenty-year-old girls, Jenny and Blendy, to deal with Music Man. I went over to Acorn Street before work to give them the drill. Plump Jenny seemed a little dim, but Blendy's spiky pink hair made Music Man laugh no end.

He said, "You girls'll like this. There was this real nice cocktail party, and a lady guest asked the hostess where the pretty maid with the pink hair who was serving the drinks had gone. The hostess asked if the lady guest wanted a drink. She said no. Guess what she wanted."

The girls studied their fingernails.

"The host! Funny, huh?" He chuckled.

I left him telling more blonde jokes converted to pink hair jokes and went off to work my four-hour shift in a library. Cheerful cutouts of reading spiders and happy witches, carrying books on their broomsticks, hung from the ceiling. Halloween. My chopped hair got a lot of weird looks. I claimed it was my costume.

After work, I went home, made tuna salad, and ate it on bread in a local park. I needed a dose of fiction writing, so I figured out a code for my two fictional evil spy characters to use to get messages to each other involving partly eaten sandwiches in different shapes left on park benches. However, my spies were so dumb that they didn't realize birds, squirrels, and winos were messing with their code.

Then I braved the local hair salon, where I was mid-haircut when James called me. "Rhonda. Found definite symptoms of hacking on your laptop. Good thing I've got it. Reynard looks like a hacking expert. Wanna do dinner Friday night?"

"I guess." I wasn't sure anymore. “You bombed out on our Tuesday night dinner plans. Are you really coming?”

“Of course. I miss you.” He hung up.

Five minutes later, the agency called. Dad had thrown fits when the girls had tried to clean or move or even touch the smallest item in the house. He had thrown his cane at one of them. Then he had required the girls to drive him to four stores and the hospital, which they had thought an excessive use of their driving skills. After lunch, during his nap, they had gone to our well-hedged back yard to gossip and sunbathe in their bras and chat on cell phones. Music Man had awoken, found their shirts in the kitchen and hidden them. Then he had left in the car. Could I please come and find their shirts? Oh, and find Dad as well? The agency was so sorry he had been misplaced, but the girls were considering a sexual harassment charge.

I went and confronted the irate girls, who seemed less worried about Dad's whereabouts than their own sunburns. I found their shirts tucked behind a new pile of Dal's scrap metal under the back bathroom vanity. Along with a second draft of
Memory Serves
, with Dad's handwriting in the margins, and a stash of Chevy car keys.

Jackpot!

The agency promised to send someone else the following day.

It was 4:15. I put off sounding the police alarm on Music Man for five minutes while I sat on the plaid sofa and leafed through the manuscript. It was quite an old draft, but he'd actually written in "Ha ha," in a few places. Wow. Dad liked my book.

On cue, there was a knock at the door. A police cruiser sat out front.

Ushering Dad up the walk, a uniform said, "Ma'am, your father ran out of gas on the 57 freeway and started walking in the slow lane. A motorist reported him to us. Sign here.”

Wow. Free delivery.

The other cop said, "Watch him better, lady, especially on Halloween."

"By the way, his license is expired." Cop #1 wrote out a ticket. "And we've impounded the car."

Oh. Not so free.

I said, "Dad, give me your keys. Now."

Music Man turned, "Hey, Officers. I got another cop joke. See, there's this policeman named Floyd Flatfoot, and his partner, Delbert Dick. Or was it Fred Fuzz and Peter Pig? Anyway, one of 'em said, 'We need to keep Jimmy the Mooch Mercato under surveillance.' And the other guy, he said …" Dad was laughing and could hardly talk. "You're gonna love this, Officer. He said, 'Yeah, and we have to watch him, too.'" Dad slapped his knee in glee.